Ritz 5

After seeing the film, I watched Kane Parsons’s entire Backrooms series on YouTube. Though there are some tells here and there that it’s the work of a teenager (and one who’s played a lot of Portal), he’s clearly a prodigious talent, and it’s easy to see why A24 scooped him up to make a feature. Parsons didn’t invent the Backrooms concept—essentially an empty (or is it?), windowless, inescapable yellow maze of a corporate campus—and I’m… See more →

A sweet fairy tale, easily the best of the small handful of Guillermo del Toro films I’ve seen. My one gripe is that it relies so heavily on the (strong) appeal of Sally Hawkins’ and Richard Jenkins’ performances that the film sags when they’re not onscreen. Michael Shannon is a serviceable villain, but his contours aren’t nuanced or idiosyncratic enough to justify the amount of attention del Toro lavishes on him.

A technically adroit series of carefully scripted temper tantrums meant to embody the struggle of making capital “A” Art, Birdman pays lip service to the nuance that accompanies authenticity, but it tends to make its points as loudly as possible. This is probably about as good as overwrought showbiz navel gazing gets, and it’s still pretty off-putting.

McConaughey is excellent, but the redemption story is pretty by-the-numbers, and is ultimately overpowered by a rather shrill anti-FDA polemic.